Sorry, I see this kind of post very often so I stopped bothering with providing a flat-out solution. If you’re not aware I usually provide a heavy bout of assessment on viability and practicality on these topics, including constructive criticism. Anyways, here we go;
For starters, you need to increase the risk and cost of PvP combat while providing motivation to cooperate.
make mid/high tier weaponry far harder to find, or ammunition scarce as well, making PvP costly
encourage cooperation via non-PvP oriented rewards, this may mean new survival mechanics, quests/easter eggs, or other objectives that are favorable to complete with other players
if zombies are difficult enough to deal with, it would be safer to band with other people to take them on vs now having to deal with both zombies and hostile players
These are the three main solutions that I have always seen for this topic. They can work individually or in tandem, but either way, we need a lot more incentive for player-to-player cooperation.
In addition this even goes hand in hand with realism. Zombies are to be feared, ammunition would be hard to find in an apocalypse due to dwindling supply, and there’s definitely a lot of motivation to not kill someone.
So make it difficult to kill players compared to zombies? Ammo restrictions don’t seem viable, you need loads of ammo for zombies, and possibly one shot for a player. End game gear should require spending more time with mid level gear, possibly making an entry item for end game gear, kind of like a horde beacon, except it unlocks the mili base door. The item or keycard should be kept after death on PvP servers, but PvP after obtaining end game gear should put you at risk of losing your gear, to reduce server takeovers, but it should be hard to get gear off a stacked player as a bandit. Measures should be put in to reduce Zerg clans, and make the meta more of a server wide alliance with bandits being outsiders.
I’ve always felt the end game zones should be deadzones that feature enemy NPCs (sometimes).
Deadzones should feature high risk, high reward combat with multiple player groups fighting over a local area, trying to extract some loot without losing it, while managing radiation and the like.
“Bandit” NPCs, (maybe turrets), high level infected/maybe animals, and other players would the major threats, and deadzones would vary in this regard as to what would show up. Loot would scale with the threat level, allowing for deadzones to have a sort of progression.
Overall, I’m thinking a bit of inspiration for the feel and theme from The Division and Escape from Tarkov for these end-game situations.
Wow! That’s a lot of good conversation. Difficult problem. All of the suggestions so far, which are great, involve making the game harder and harder. I think that’s where I started on this topic but obviously there’s been a lot of conversation already. Maybe there is no stopping the ‘fps’ conversion of the game once pvp is enabled. Ultimately other people are going to be a ton more challenging than the environment, zombies, animals, etc. Increase the difficulty of the environment and you’ll get more cooperation…that I buy.
…but will it be cooperation towards the survival goals of the game or towards killing and looting smaller groups or lone players? The points you guys have raised made me re-think a lot of this. The problem may be less in the game mechanics more in the players. We are, after all, people. The Huns, The Mongols, Alexander the Great, Hitler, Ceasar…it’s what we do. I suppose its taken thousands of years to get the level of civilization we enjoy today…and just under the surface the seeds to bring it all crashing down remain itching to come out. Fascinating though it may be, I think I like that Nelson is focusing on PVE. It is, after all, Unturned and not Call of Duty.
You think Nelson has had all these idea floating about in his head while trying to figure out where to take the game?
Maybe make killing players slow and risky, and zombies more of a threat and requiring more strategy to kill.
You could make killing players take a few seconds and one or two mags, while keeping zombie damage, but that would change balance for a lot of things.
Well, I’ve asked Nelson about the hardcore survival element in the past, and this is what he had to say:
In essence, these things are what many of us veterans want. We’ve seen 3.0 as a horror show of steroid-fueled PvP and KoS. And many of us have had enough - despite Unturned being intended as a zombie survival game, in 3.0 the zombies are literally the least of your concerns. Players currently pose far more of a threat, when in reality, zombies (as well as the actual survival element that has been a bit underdone in 3.0) should be your most immediate threat. The way zombies are right now, they’re a borderline joke, and literally any gun you find anywhere can easily clear out towns or even megas. Heck, as long as you don’t find burners, you can pretty much fight any zombie with a decent melee weapon and a small degree of skill.
That is why we’re all pushing for “hard” suggestions. It’s not that we want the game to be a living nightmare, it’s that all these years Unturned has been too easy.